Clement Valla’s ‘Postcards From Google Earth’

Landscape photography on a postcard is not an uncommon thing – but what if the scenery was captured through the lens of 3D rendering? Clement Valla puts that concept to question in Postcards From Google Earth by capturing the many beautiful (and not so beautiful) seams in the Google Earth make-up and presenting them as digital postcards. While the project certainly entertains the idea of post-ironic beauty in a digital culture, there is an even greater, more tangible attractiveness in these picturesque ‘mistakes:’ their rarity. Because Google Earth is constantly correcting itself, hiccups such as the ones Valla has collected are short-lived; in fact, most of the glitches in his work have already been fixed. In the removing of these glitches, Google Earth has forced the viewer to observe the action straight from Valla’s work, in a cyclically referential experience very similar to the purpose of actual postcards.